Viral Immunology
“Back then, I wasn’t ill so often”: With advancing age not only the skin loses its elasticity – many organs lose their functions. So does the immune system: Defense cells do not react promptly anymore, and immunological memory is not established. As a result, we are poorly protected by vaccines and more susceptible to infections, but at the same time suffer from inflammatory disease. While the mechanisms of immune aging remain unknown, chronic viral infections are environmental factors that may accelerate the age-related changes of the immune system. Read more about how pathogens may have an impact on the real age of our immune system.
Leader
Selected Publications
Cicin-Sain L.*, Brien J.D., Uhrlaub J., Drabig, A., Marandu T.F., Nikolich-Zugich, J*. 2012. Cytomegalovirus Infection Impairs Immune Responses and Accentuates T-cell pool Changes Observed in Aging Mice. PLoS Pathogens 8(8): e1002849.
Ebermann L., Ruzsics Z., Casalegno-Garduno R., Guzman C.A., van Rooijen N., Koszinowski U., Cicin-Sain L.* 2012 Block of Death-Receptor Apoptosis Protects Mouse Cytomegalovirus from Macrophages and is a Determinant of Virulence in Immunodeficient Hosts. PLoS Pathogens 8(12): e1003062
Dağ F, Dölken L, Holzki J, Drabig A, Weingärtner A, Conte I, Geffers R, Davenport C, Rand U, Adler A, Wirth D, Messerle M, Hauser H, Čičin-Šain L*. 2014 Reversible Silencing of Cytomegalovirus Genomes by Type I Interferon Governs Virus Latency PLoS Pathogens 10(2): e1003962.
Iryna Dekhtiarenko, Ratts RB, Blatnik R, Lee LN, Fischer S, Borkner L, Oduro JD, Marandu TF, Hoppe S, Ruzsics Z, Sonnemann JK, Mansouri M, Meyer C, Lemmermann NAW, Holtappels R, Arens R, Klenerman P, Früh K, Reddehase MJ, Riemer AB, Cicin-Sain L*. 2016 Peptide processing is critical for T-cell memory inflation and may be optimized to improve immune protection by CMV-based vaccine vectors PLOS Pathog. 12(12):e1006072
Borkner L, Sitnik KM, Dekhtiarenko I, Tao R, Pulm AK, Drexler I, Čičin-Šain L*. 2017 Immune Protection by a Cytomegalovirus Vaccine Vector Expressing a Single Low-avidity Epitope. J. Immunol. 199(5):1737-1747
Kasmapour B, Kubsch T, Rand U, Eiz-Vesper B, Messerle M, Vondran FWR, Wiegmann B, Haverich A, Čičin-Šain L*. 2018 Myeloid dendritic cells repress human cytomegalovirus gene expression and spread by releasing interferon-unrelated soluble antiviral factors J Virol. 92(1). pii: e01138-17. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01138-17
Cicin-Sain L*, Arens R. 2018 Exhaustion and Inflation at Antipodes of T Cell Responses to Chronic Virus Infection. Trends Microbiol. 26(6):498-509. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2017.11.012 Review.
Zheng X, Oduro JD, BoehmeJD, Borkner L, Ebensen T, Heise U, Gereke M, Pils M, Krmpotic A, Guzmán CA, Bruder D, Čičin-Šain L* Mucosal CD8+ T cell responses induced by an MCMV based vaccine vector confer protection against influenza challenge PLOS Pathogens 6;15(9):e1008036. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008036. [Epub ahead of print]
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